Arab armies in 'Small Wars' and the 'Arab Spring' (merged thread)

[davidbfpo]

A week ago Carl asked, in the thread on Egypt, a question that deserves its own thread:

That leads me to conclude that the Egyptian army may know what it's about when it comes to small war fighting. Then it occurred to me that the Algerian army and gov won a very hard small war back in the 90s. So I got a question for all but especially JCustis, how effective have Arab armies been at fighting small wars and suppresing insurgencies over the years? Do we study their efforts?

I will move the responses made to date in a moment, so this opening post will slip down a little.

There is a similar thread on the 'small war' theme: Arab armies and the 'Arab Spring'